My Tropic Isle - Edmund James Banfield (little bear else holmelund minarik .txt) 📗

as they scented danger, dashed back and blended imperceptibly with the mass.

"We catch plenty big fella mullet!" George exclaimed, as he gleefully splashed the water, and the cloud contracted and shrank back. The stream was about ten feet wide. Our equipment for sport consisted of a tomahawk and a grass-tree spear so frail that any of the mullet could have swum off with it without inconvenience.

Straddling the stream side by side we splashed and "shooed" when the slightest symptom of a sally on the part of the fish was betrayed. A few brave leaders darted down, generally in pairs, and flashed back in fright at our noisy demonstrations, and so the blockade of the mullet began.

While I stood guard shouting and "shooing" and making such commotion as I trusted would convince the fish that the blockading force was ever so much stronger and more truculent than it really was, George began to construct a pre-eminently practical wall. Its design was evolved ages upon ages ago by black students of hydrostatics and fish. George had imbibed the principles of its construction with his mother's milk. He cut down several saplings, and, screwing the butt ends into the soft sand about a foot apart, interlaced them with branches of mangrove and beach-trailers and swathes of grass. But the tide began to ebb. The pent-up current, strong and rapid, frequently carried portions of the structure away. George had to duck and dive to tie the vines and creepers to the stakes close down to the sandy bottom. Though armfuls of leafage floated to the surface and rolled out to sea, George worked with joyful desperation. Presently the fish began to make determined rushes. Shouting and splashing, tearing down branches, capturing driftwood, diving and gasping, his efforts were unceasing. Understanding the guile of the fish, he sought to make the deeper part of the weir secure, and for an hour or so he laboured in the water with head, hands, and feet. While with deft fingers he weaved creepers and branches to the stakes, his feet beat the surface into surf and surge to the scaring of the fish to the remote limits of their retreat. But the tighter the weir became, the more the pressure was on it. Fast as repairs were made at one spot gaps appeared in another which demanded immediate attention. The quantity of material that our works absorbed was scarcely to be realised. But a double-ended, amphibious black boy can work every-day wonders. Not a single fish had escaped. We had the whole shoal at our mercy, for George had confidently provided against all contingencies.

Buoyant on the bosom of the stream came a good-sized log with raking, shortened limbs. Under its cover the fish sallied forth a hundred strong, strenuous in bravery and resolution. The log swept past me, making a terrible breach in our weir, through which many fish shot. Some leaped high overhead. Two landed on the sand, helplessly flapping and gasping. George occupied the breach, and as he waved his arms and shouted, a four-pounder, leaping high, struck him on the forehead. He sat down emphatically, and another gap was made. As he struggled to his feet the vanquished members of the assaulting party fled to the main host. Honours were with the besieged. Blood oozed from a lump on George's forehead, there were cruel breaches in the weir, the fish had gained confidence and knowledge of our works, and only two were prisoners.

Now the sallies became frequent. Sometimes the fish came as scouts, more often in battalions, and in the dashes for liberty many were successful. George toiled like a fiend. His repairs looked all right on the surface, but ever and anon considerable flotsam indicated vital gaps. In spite of splashing and "shooing" and the complications of the weir, we had had the mortification of seeing hosts escape.

Then George changed his tactics. Abandoning his faith in the weir, he converted it into what he called, in his enthusiastic excitement, "a bed." He laid branches of the weir so that the leaves and twigs interlaced and crossed, buttressing the structure with another row of palisades. His theory was that the fish, as the water became shallower, would cease their efforts to wriggle through, and, leaping high, would land on the bed and be easily captured. No preliminary shouting and splashing affected the solidity of that determined array. Mullet knew all about blackfellows' weirs and their beds. Some slid through. Many leaped, and, curving gracefully in the air, struck the "bed" at such an angle that it offered no more resistance to them than a sheet of damp tissue-paper. They sniggered as they went through it, and splashed wildly to the sea. They were grand fish--undaunted, afraid of no man or his paltry obstacles to liberty, up to every cunning manoeuvre.

Were we to be beaten by a lot of silly, slippery fish in a shallow stream? Never! January's unsheltered sun played upon my tanned, wet, and shameless back; the salt sweat coursed down my shoulders and dripped from my face. The scrub fowl babbled and chuckled, cockatoos jeered from the topmost branches of giant milkwood trees and nodded with yellow crests grave approval of the deeds of the besieged; fleet white pigeons flew from a banquet of blue fruits to a diet of crude seeds, and not a single one of the canons of the gentle art of fishing but was scandalously violated. It was a coarse and unmanly encounter--the wit, strategy, finesse, and boldness of fish pitted against the empty noise and bluster of inferior man and the flimsiness of his despicable barriers.

In silence and magnificent resolve they came at us. We fought with sticks and all the power of our lungs. Rest was out of the question. The leafy dyke and "bed" stood ever in need of repair; the sallies were continuous and determined. The "bed" was not made for those knightly fish to lie ignobly upon. A single fish would slip down-stream, and, gathering speed and effort, leap with the glitter of heroism in its eyes. One such George caught in his arms. Another slipped through my fingers and struck me on the shoulders, and I bore the mark of the assault for a week. George's brow was bleeding. Indeed, all his blood was up. His "heroic rage" was at bursting point. We had toiled for two hours and counted but three fish, while as many hundred had battled past our siege works. Quite as many remained, and time, as it generally does, seemed to be in favour of the attacking party.

Was Charles Lamb right when he spoke of "the uncommunicating muteness of fishes"? These beleaguered mullet surely exchanged ideas and acted with deliberation and in concert. All swayed this way or that in accordance, so it seemed, with the will of the front rank. A tremor there was repeated instantly at the rear. When a detachment made a bid for liberty it was in response to a common impulse. When a single individual started on a forlorn hope the others seemed to watch our hostile demonstrations as it leaped--flashing silvery lights from its scales--to prove the unworthiness of weirs and beds, and we, of the ranks of Tuscany, cheered if its deed of derring do was neatly and successfully achieved.

Fish to the number of five having fallen into our clutches, we stood by and watched the rest. Most of them leaped gloriously to liberty. Some ignominiously wriggled. Others remained in the pool, their nerves so shattered by bluster and assault that they had not the melancholy courage to slip away. In his wrath--for blood still oozed from his forehead-- George would have exterminated the skulkers, and, checked in his bloodthirstiness, he showered upon them contemptible titles while he cooked two of those we had captured. Wrapped in several folds of banana and "ginger" leaves, and steamed in hot sand, the full flavour of the fish was retained and something of the aroma of the leaves imparted. I was not, therefore, astonished when George, having eaten a three-pounder, finished off my leavings--nothing to boast of, by the way--and proceeded to cook another (for the dog); and Barry, I am bound to say, got fairly liberal pickings. The weather was close, and being satisfied, and, for once, frugal, George cooked the two remaining fish, and swathing them neatly in fresh green leaves, sauntered away, cooing a corroboree of content.


CHAPTER XVII



WET SEASON DAYS

"The north-east spends his rage; he now shut up
Within his iron cave, the effusive south
Warms the wide air and o'er the vault of heaven
Breathes the big clouds with vernal showers distent."

THOMSON.


Just as in the spring a young man's fancies lightly turn to thoughts of love, so at the beginning of each new year in tropical Queensland the minds of the weather sages become sensitive and impressionable. All the tarnish is rubbed off the recollection of former ill manners on the part of the weather, when about the middle of January the wind begins to bluster and to abuse good-natured trees, shaking off twigs and whirling branches like a tipsy bully striving to dislocate a weak man's arm at the shoulder. We remember dubious events all too vividly when the recitation of them does not make for mutual consolation.

In January, 1909, for two days the sea burst on the black rocks of the islet in the bay in clouds of foam. It was all bombast, froth and bubble, or rather a gentle back-hander, for the cyclone was playing all sorts of naughty pranks elsewhere. But why were we apprehensive? In disobedience to the scriptural injunction, we had observed the clouds and the birds. Twice a flock of lesser frigate-birds, those dark, fish-tailed high-fliers which are for ever cutting animated "W's" in the air with long lithe wings--had appeared. Seldom do they come unless as harbingers of boisterous weather. On each recent occasion they had been absolutely trustworthy messengers. Watching them soaring and swooping, we said one to another: "Behold the cyclone cometh!" But it did not. With a passing flick of its tail it passed elsewhere.

Altogether, however, we had very queer weather and two or three "rum" sorts of nights. On the 19th the morning was calm, the sky brilliantly clear. A north-east breeze sprang up at noon. Deep violet thunder-clouds gathered in the west, and, muttering and grumbling, rolled across the narrow strait slowly and sullenly. Australia scowled at our penitent Island, threatening direful inflictions--lightning, thunder, and an overwhelming cataclysm. Behind that frowning Providence there was a smiling face. The good storm, albeit black and angry, behaved benignly. Gentle rain came, and a picturesque little electrical display to a humming accompaniment of far distant thunder, followed by a soothingly cool south-westerly breeze. Just at sundown the weather-god, repenting of his frown, bestowed a glorious benediction.

All afternoon a damp pall had overhung the Island, mopping up feeble sounds and strangely muffling the stronger. Now it was translated. Lifting so that the summits only of the hills were capped, the haze (for it became nothing more) assumed a luminous yellow saffron suffused with sage green. Against this singularly lovely, ample "cloth" branches and leaves of steadfast trees stood out in high relief. All the lower levels became transparently clear, the definition of distant objects magically sharpened, spaces translucent. In a sea which shone like polished silver the islet was a gem--green enamel, amethyst rocks, golden sand. The bold white trunks of giant tea-trees glowed; the creamy blooms of bloodwoods were as flecks of snow; the tips of the fronds of coco-nut palms flickered vividly as burnished steel; the white-painted house assumed speckless purity. All light colours were heightened; ruddy browns and